I too noticed the quick piv­ot from ‘sev­er­al shoot­ers from ele­vat­ed posi­tions’ to ‘lone gun­man’. Cell phone video shows him on ground lev­el in front of a build­ing and he appar­ent­ly end­ed his attack in a park­ing struc­ture.
None of this makes sense on it’s face, but does seem to fit a def­i­nite pat­tern with sim­i­lar mass shoot­ings — ex-mil­i­tary being a fre­quent com­mon­al­i­ty that sits fore­most in my mind.
It’s a devel­op­ing sto­ry, but take note of the stark con­trast between ear­ly eye­wit­ness reports, and lat­er ‘offi­cial’ procla­ma­tions.

SLA: http://www.ep.tc/realist/98/

@Kalkanchowder–

Again, I stress that I have more ques­tions than answers.

Some inter­net sources are stress­ing how irre­spon­si­ble the Dal­las Police Depart­ment was in its dis­clo­sures on the inci­dent.

Per­haps they were, I can’t say.

Still, the offi­cial ver­sion does not pass the “sniffs test.”

Read the above excerpts from the arti­cle care­ful­ly.

Now, the reports of tri­an­gu­lat­ed fire are being dis­missed as echoes from sur­round­ing build­ings.

Again, per­haps they were, but the oth­er detainees, the peo­ple who sped off in a Mer­cedes after throw­ing a cam­ou­flage bag into the back of the car are not explained by echoes.

The demon­stra­tors were, by all accounts, peace­ful. Although Texas is an “open car­ry” state, bring weapons to an event of this type appears high­ly fool­ish and I am not sat­is­fied by the accounts pro­vid­ed.

The oth­er “per­sons of inter­est” are now being char­ac­ter­ized as demon­stra­tors who were armed and/or car­ry­ing ammu­ni­tion.

Again, I don’t find this expla­na­tion sat­is­fac­to­ry.

Also: with regard to echoes–sound trav­els rel­a­tive­ly slow­ly. Note how long thun­der fol­lows a light­ning flash, depend­ing on the prox­im­i­ty of the light­ning.

I have not heard an audio record­ing of the shoot­ing. That might be inter­est­ing.

Police would have a greater famil­iar­i­ty with gun­shot reports and result­ing echoes than a lay per­son.

One last note: in this coun­try’s major assas­si­na­tions, JFK, MLK and RFK, we have seen “street-lev­el” Nazis and white suprema­cists being used at the oper­a­tional lev­el of these events.

Cer­tain­ly, this event will ben­e­fit the Trumpenkampfver­bande and their ilk.

Was that actu­al­ly the intent from the begin­ning?

Best,

Dave

One thing to note regard­ing the armed pro­tes­tors at the ral­ly is that Mark Hugh­es, the open-car­ry activist who was ini­tial­ly iden­ti­fied as a sus­pect, was videoed hand­ing his gun over to the police right when the shoot­ing start­ed, and clear­ly was­n’t involved with the shoot­ing. But as the arti­cle below notes, the May­or stat­ed that when the shoot­ing broke out there were about 20 open­ly armed peo­ple at the protest. So it will be inter­est­ing to learn if the three “unco­op­er­a­tive” peo­ple who were detained as sus­pects but lat­er deemed to be unin­volved were among those 20 open-car­ry peo­ple. And giv­en the num­ber of armed peo­ple at the protests, it’s a reminder of one of the dan­gers of open-car­ry laws in a large crowd that nev­er real­ly gets men­tioned: shoot­ers might be able to some­what cam­ou­flage them­selves sim­ply by attempt­ing to dress and look like one of the inno­cent peo­ple open-car­ry­ing.

The arti­cle below, which described the bomb-mak­ing equip­ment and arse­nal found at his home, also points out anoth­er aspect of the shooter’s back­ground that simul­ta­ne­ous­ly lends cred­i­bil­i­ty to the the­o­ry that he would have at least been phys­i­cal­ly capa­ble of sin­gle-hand­ed­ly “tri­an­gu­lat­ing” his shots from mul­ti­ple loca­tions and ele­va­tions but is still real­ly bizarre: He left a man­i­festo. But it was­n’t a polit­i­cal man­i­festo. It was a man­i­festo about tech­niques for shoot­ing and mov­ing dur­ing ground com­bat:

CBS News

Dal­las gun­man amassed per­son­al arse­nal at sub­ur­ban home

July 9, 2016, 7:30 AM

Last Updat­ed Jul 9, 2016 2:50 PM EDT

DALLAS — An Army vet­er­an killed by Dal­las police after he fatal­ly shot five offi­cers amassed a per­son­al arse­nal at his sub­ur­ban home, includ­ing bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als, bul­let­proof vests, rifles, ammu­ni­tion and a jour­nal of com­bat tac­tics, author­i­ties said Fri­day.

The man iden­ti­fied as 25-year-old Mic­ah John­son told author­i­ties he was upset about the fatal police shoot­ings of two black men ear­li­er this week and want­ed to exter­mi­nate whites, “espe­cial­ly white offi­cers,” offi­cials said.

Law enforce­ment sources believe John­son had been plan­ning the attack on police for some time but that it was the police shoot­ings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Min­neso­ta that pushed him over the edge, CBS News home­land secu­ri­ty cor­re­spon­dent Jeff Pegues reports.

CBS News has learned that inves­ti­ga­tors believe John­son was build­ing his arse­nal over the last two years. He was stock­pil­ing guns and gath­er­ing the ele­ments to build explo­sives. Inves­ti­ga­tors said he had accu­mu­lat­ed chem­i­cal and elec­tron­ic pre­cur­sors to build­ing explo­sives along with PVC pip­ing.

“This was a mobile shoot­er that had writ­ten man­i­festos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that,” May­or Mike Rawl­ings told reporters. “He did his dam­age, but we did dam­age to him as well.”

Pegues reports those are skills he may have picked up dur­ing a six-year mil­i­tary career.

In Sep­tem­ber 2013, John­son was acti­vat­ed to serve in the 420th Engi­neer Brigade in Afghanistan, Pegues reports. He went through basic train­ing, where he would have had to qual­i­fy on an M‑16 or M‑4, which are basic rifles car­ried by sol­diers.

He was killed by a robot-deliv­ered bomb after the shoot­ings, which marked the dead­liest day for U.S. law enforce­ment since the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist attacks. In all, 12 offi­cers were shot.

In Geor­gia, Mis­souri and Ten­nessee, author­i­ties said gun-wield­ing civil­ians also shot offi­cers in indi­vid­ual attacks that came after the black men were killed in Louisiana and Min­neso­ta. Two offi­cers were wound­ed, one crit­i­cal­ly.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked for the pub­lic’s prayers. In a let­ter post­ed online Fri­day, Abbott said “every life mat­ters” and urged Tex­ans to come togeth­er.

“In the end,” he wrote, “evil always fails.”

John­son was a pri­vate first class from the Dal­las sub­urb of Mesquite with a spe­cial­ty in car­pen­try and mason­ry. He served in the Army Reserve for six years start­ing in 2009 and did one tour in Afghanistan from Novem­ber 2013 to July 2014, the mil­i­tary said.

A mil­i­tary lawyer says John­son was accused of sex­u­al harass­ment by a female sol­dier when he served in the Army in Afghanistan in May 2014. Lawyer Brad­ford Glen­den­ing, who rep­re­sent­ed John­son, said John­son was sent back to the U.S. with the rec­om­men­da­tion he be removed from the Army with an “oth­er than hon­or­able” dis­charge.

Glen­den­ing said John­son was set to be removed from the Army in Sep­tem­ber 2014 because of the inci­dent. Instead, John­son got an hon­or­able dis­charge the fol­low­ing April — for rea­sons Gar­den­ing does­n’t under­stand.

After the attack, he tried to take refuge in a col­lege cam­pus build­ing and exchanged gun­fire with police, the police said.

The sus­pect described his motive dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions and said he act­ed alone and was not affil­i­at­ed with any groups, Police Chief David Brown said.

On Sat­ur­day, CBS News learned that inves­ti­ga­tors have found no links between John­son and vio­lent extrem­ist groups, either for­eign or domes­tic.

John­son was black. Law enforce­ment offi­cials did­n’t dis­close the race of the dead offi­cers.

The blood­shed unfold­ed just a few blocks from where Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy was slain in 1963.

The shoot­ing began Thurs­day evening while hun­dreds of peo­ple were gath­ered to protest the killings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and sub­ur­ban St. Paul, Min­neso­ta. Brown told reporters that snipers fired “ambush-style” on the offi­cers. Two civil­ians were also wound­ed.

Author­i­ties ini­tial­ly blamed mul­ti­ple “snipers” for Thurs­day’s attack, and at one point said three sus­pects were in cus­tody. But by Fri­day after­noon, all atten­tion focused on John­son, and state and fed­er­al offi­cials said the entire attack appeared to be the work of a sin­gle gun­man.

With the lone shoot­er dead, Rawl­ings declared that the city was safe and “we can move on to heal­ing.” He said the gun­man wore a pro­tec­tive vest and used an AR-15 rifle, a weapon sim­i­lar to the one fired last month in the attack on an Orlan­do, Flori­da, night­club that killed 49 peo­ple.

When the gun­fire began, the may­or said, about 20 peo­ple in the crowd were car­ry­ing rifles and wear­ing pro­tec­tive equip­ment. That raised ear­ly con­cerns that they might have been involved. But after con­duct­ing inter­views, inves­ti­ga­tors con­clud­ed all the shots came from the same attack­er.

In Wash­ing­ton, the nation’s top law enforce­ment offi­cial, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Loret­ta Lynch, called for calm, say­ing the recent vio­lence can’t be allowed to “pre­cip­i­tate a new nor­mal.”

Lynch said pro­test­ers con­cerned about killings by police should not be dis­cour­aged “by those who use your law­ful actions as a cov­er for their heinous vio­lence.”

The oth­er attacks on police includ­ed a Geor­gia man who author­i­ties said called 911 to report a break-in, then ambushed the offi­cer who came to inves­ti­gate. That sparked a shootout in which both the offi­cer and sus­pect were wound­ed but expect­ed to sur­vive.

In sub­ur­ban St. Louis, a motorist shot an offi­cer at least once as the offi­cer walked back to his car dur­ing a traf­fic stop, police said. The offi­cer was hos­pi­tal­ized in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

And in Ten­nessee, a man accused of shoot­ing indis­crim­i­nate­ly at pass­ing cars and police on a high­way told inves­ti­ga­tors he was angry about police vio­lence against African-Amer­i­cans, author­i­ties said.

...

The Dal­las shoot­ings occurred in an area of hotels, restau­rants, busi­ness­es and some res­i­den­tial apart­ments only a few blocks from Dealey Plaza, the land­mark made famous by the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion.

The scene was chaot­ic, with offi­cers with auto­mat­ic rifles on the street cor­ners.

Mar­cus Carter, 33, was in the area when peo­ple start­ed run­ning toward him, yelling about gun­shots. Carter said the first shot sound­ed like a fire­crack­er. But then they pro­ceed­ed in quick suc­ces­sion, with brief paus­es between spurts of gun­fire.

“It was breaks in the fire,” he said. “It was a sin­gle shot and then after that sin­gle shot it was a brief pause. And then it was boom boom boom boom boom! Pause. Boom boom boom boom boom!”

Video post­ed on social media appeared to show a gun­man at ground lev­el exchang­ing fire with a police offi­cer who was then felled.

...

““This was a mobile shoot­er that had writ­ten man­i­festos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that,” May­or Mike Rawl­ings told reporters. “He did his dam­age, but we did dam­age to him as well.””

Giv­en the fact that a sin­gle shoot­er being held respon­si­ble for tri­an­gu­lat­ed mul­ti-ele­va­tion shots in a short time frame, just blocks away from Dealey Plaza, it’s hard to avoid the obvi­ous con­nec­tion to the “mag­ic bul­let” of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. It’s the “mag­ic shoot­er”!

And yet, you almost could­n’t come up with a more plau­si­ble back­ground for a real life “mag­ic shoot­er” than a guy who wrote a man­i­festo (it sounds like it was more like an exten­sive jour­nal) about how to “shoot and move”. And note that his neigh­bors report­ed­ly saw him prac­tic­ing mil­i­tary maneu­vers in his back­yard. In terms of pars­ing the sequence of events, as far as polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed domes­tic ter­ror attacks go this one is a doozy. It’s simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bizarre yet plau­si­ble.

In terms of the motives, one major pos­si­ble fac­tor that’s emerg­ing as the inves­ti­ga­tion into his back­ground unfolds is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of some sort of men­tal ill­ness. The guy was only 25, so he was at the prime age for some­thing like schiz­o­phre­nia man­i­fest­ing itself. And his report­ed claims that “the end in com­ing” point towards some sort of reli­gious fer­vor, although who knows. Based on the fol­low­ing report, friends say he was­n’t known to be par­tic­u­lar­ly polit­i­cal, but did “Like” groups like the Nation of Islam and the New Black Pan­ther Par­ty, which was found­ed in Dal­las. Since the guy was char­ac­ter­ized as a “lon­er”, there pre­sum­ably aren’t too many friends to inter­view about his per­son­al­i­ty, but at a min­i­mum, he appears to have been grav­i­tat­ing towards Black sep­a­ratist pol­i­tics. Based on his state­ments to nego­tia­tors that he want­ed to specif­i­cal­ly kill police offi­cers, it seems that he was almost try to pull of a Black sep­a­ratist ver­sion of Dylann Roof’s slaugh­ter in Charleston, SC. If he was indeed expe­ri­enc­ing an emerg­ing men­tal ill­ness, influ­ences like the Nation of Islam would have been par­tic­u­lar­ly unhelp­ful.

Also note that, accord­ing to the arti­cle below, the fact that he was dis­charged from the army at all 2014 over a sex­u­al harass­ment charge sug­gest that what­ev­er harass­ment he was engag­ing in was par­tic­u­lar­ly severe. Nor­mal­ly sol­diers are sent to coun­sel­ing for some­thing like that. So while it’s dif­fi­cult to infer too much about the shooter’s men­tal state from some­thing like a sex­u­al harass­ment charge, in terms of spec­u­lat­ing about what role influ­ences like Black sep­a­ratist pol­i­tics could have played in rad­i­cal­iz­ing the guy, it does appear he was already los­ing his grip on his emo­tions a few years ago and has been stock­pil­ing an arse­nal for the last two years. And this was while he was keep­ing his exten­sive com­bat tac­tics jour­nal.

So while the recent police killings in Min­neso­ta and Louisiana may have been the match that set this guy off, the kind of mur­der­ous rage that erupt­ed in Dal­las has been build­ing for a while:

CBS News

Army sent Dal­las sniper home from Afghanistan

July 9, 2016, 9:54 AM
Last Updat­ed Jul 9, 2016 2:49 PM EDT

MESQUITE, Texas — The Dal­las sniper had been sent home from Afghanistan after being accused of sex­u­al­ly harass­ing a female, and was described as a lon­er who fol­lowed black mil­i­tant groups on social media.

Mic­ah Xavier John­son, who fatal­ly shot five offi­cers and wound­ed sev­en more before police killed him with a remote-con­trolled bomb on Fri­day, lived with fam­i­ly mem­bers in the blue-col­lar sub­urb of Mesquite, where he played bas­ket­ball for hours at a time.

Friends there said the 25-year-old black man did­n’t seem inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics, but his Face­book page sug­gests oth­er­wise: He “liked” black mil­i­tant groups includ­ing the African Amer­i­can Defense League and the New Black Pan­ther Par­ty, which was found­ed in Dal­las.

His pho­to showed him wear­ing a dashi­ki and rais­ing his fist over the words “Black Pow­er,” and his cov­er shot car­ried the red, black and green Pan-African flag.

CBS News home­land secu­ri­ty cor­re­spon­dent Jeff Pegues reports that on the Face­book page of the Black Pan­ther Par­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi John­son post­ed a graph­ic video of dol­phins being slaugh­tered, and what he wrote sug­gest­ed a hatred for whites: “Why do so many whites (not all) enjoy killing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in the death of inno­cent beings?”

Law enforce­ment sources believe John­son had been plan­ning the attack on police for some time but that it was the police shoot­ings of black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Min­neso­ta that pushed him over the edge, Pegues reports.

“This was a mobile shoot­er that had writ­ten man­i­festos on how to shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that,” May­or Mike Rawl­ings told reporters. “He did his dam­age, but we did dam­age to him as well.”

Pegues reports those are skills he may have picked up dur­ing a six-year mil­i­tary career.

In Sep­tem­ber 2013, John­son was acti­vat­ed to serve in the 420th Engi­neer Brigade in Afghanistan, Pegues reports. He went through basic train­ing, where he would have had to qual­i­fy on an M‑16 or M‑4, which are basic rifles car­ried by sol­diers.

Start­ing in 2009, John­son served in the Army Reserve as a pri­vate first class with a spe­cial­ty in car­pen­try and mason­ry, the mil­i­tary said.

In May 2014, six months into his Afghanistan tour, he was accused of sex­u­al harass­ment by a female sol­dier. The Army sent him state­side, rec­om­mend­ing an “oth­er than hon­or­able dis­charge,” said Brad­ford Glen­den­ing, the mil­i­tary lawyer who rep­re­sent­ed him.

That rec­om­men­da­tion was “high­ly unusu­al,” Brad­ford said, since coun­sel­ing is usu­al­ly ordered before more dras­tic steps are tak­en.

“In his case, it was appar­ent­ly so egre­gious, it was not just the act itself,” Glen­den­ing told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “I’m sure that this guy was the black sheep of his unit.”

Accord­ing to a court fil­ing Glen­den­ing read over the phone Fri­day, the vic­tim said she want­ed John­son to “receive men­tal help,” while also seek­ing a pro­tec­tive order to keep him away from her and her fam­i­ly, wher­ev­er they went. John­son was ordered to avoid all con­tact with her.

Glen­den­ing said John­son was set to be removed from the Army in Sep­tem­ber 2014 because of the inci­dent, but instead got an hon­or­able dis­charge months lat­er — for rea­sons he can’t under­stand.

“Some­one real­ly screwed up,” he said. “But to my clien­t’s ben­e­fit.”

When author­i­ties searched John­son’s home Fri­day they found bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als, bal­lis­tic vests, rifles, ammu­ni­tion, and a per­son­al jour­nal of com­bat tac­tics.

CBS News has learned that inves­ti­ga­tors believe John­son was build­ing his arse­nal over the last two years. He was stock­pil­ing guns and gath­er­ing the ele­ments to build explo­sives. Inves­ti­ga­tors said he had accu­mu­lat­ed chem­i­cal and elec­tron­ic pre­cur­sors to build­ing explo­sives along with PVC pip­ing.

Dal­las Police Chief David O. Brown said John­son told nego­tia­tors before he was killed that he was act­ing alone and was unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any group.

On Sat­ur­day, CBS News learned that inves­ti­ga­tors have found no links between John­son and vio­lent extrem­ist groups, either for­eign or domes­tic.

The chief said John­son cit­ed the fatal shoot­ings of black men by police offi­cers in Louisiana and Min­neso­ta, which prompt­ed the protest march in Dal­las and many oth­er cities.

“The sus­pect said he was upset with white peo­ple and want­ed to kill white peo­ple, espe­cial­ly white offi­cers,” Brown said.

Activists with Black Lives Mat­ter, whose peace­ful march police were guard­ing as he opened fire, repu­di­at­ed the shoot­ings, and it was­n’t imme­di­ate­ly clear if John­son had any con­nec­tion to the move­ment, which has dis­avowed vio­lence.

But one of the groups John­son “liked” on Face­book, the African Amer­i­can Defense League, post­ed a mes­sage ear­li­er in the week encour­ag­ing vio­lence against police in response to the killing in Louisiana.

“The Pig has shot and killed Alton Ster­ling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana! You and I know what we must do and I don’t mean march­ing, mak­ing a lot of noise, or attend­ing con­ven­tions. We must ‘Ral­ly The Troops!’ It is time to vis­it Louisiana and hold a bar­beque.” The mes­sage was attrib­uted to Dr. Mau­ricelm-Lei Millere, a leader in the orga­ni­za­tion.

Anoth­er group John­son “liked” was the New Black Pan­ther Par­ty, whose lead­ers have “long expressed vir­u­lent­ly anti-white and anti-Semit­ic opin­ions,” accord­ing to the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter.

John­son also “liked” the Nation of Islam and the Black Rid­ers Lib­er­a­tion Par­ty, which the cen­ter described as “hate groups.”

Among John­son’s oth­er social media likes were groups that focus on the his­to­ry and accom­plish­ments of African-Amer­i­cans, such as Black Love Mat­ters, the Nubian Rootz Cul­tur­al Cen­ter, and I Love Black Archae­ol­o­gist, a web series whose main char­ac­ter uses a time machine to vis­it famous black peo­ple.

...

John­son had no crim­i­nal his­to­ry, accord­ing to author­i­ties. Local court records show his par­ents were divorced in 1996.

He was believed to have shared a two-sto­ry tan brick home in Mesquite with fam­i­ly mem­bers. He grad­u­at­ed from John Horn High School in Mesquite, where he was a ROTC mem­ber, school dis­trict offi­cials said.

Sharon Carter, who works in the dis­tric­t’s reg­is­trar’s office and lives near John­son’s home, said she saw him occa­sion­al­ly wear­ing mil­i­tary fatigues as he left for Army reservist train­ing, but nev­er saw him armed.

“They say he was stand­off­ish in high school,” Carter said. “I nev­er real­ly spoke to him. He kept to him­self.”

A rel­a­tive had praised John­son on his birth­day in 2014 as “def­i­nite­ly Army strong” on his Face­book page, call­ing him an “enter­tain­ing, lov­ing, under­stand­ing, not to men­tion hand­some friend, broth­er (and) son.”

After John­son was killed, a rel­a­tive post­ed on her Face­book page, “I keep say­ing its not true...my eyes hurt from cry­ing. Y him-? And why was he down­town.” She did not respond to Face­book mes­sages.

Friend Israel Coop­er said John­son went by “Xavier,” his mid­dle name, had a “cool vibe,” was­n’t real­ly polit­i­cal and seemed edu­cat­ed.

Coop­er said he and John­son played bas­ket­ball at a park near his home. “He would be out there for eight hours. Like it was his job. Just hoopin’,” he said.

Coop­er said that when he heard the sus­pect was John­son, he “was in dis­be­lief because he’s just not like a vio­lent or rough dude.”

“So I was, ‘Nah, it’s prob­a­bly anoth­er Xavier some­where, you know,’ ” Coop­er said. “But then, with pic­tures on the inter­net and stuff, I’m like ‘OK.’ ”

...

“Accord­ing to a court fil­ing Glen­den­ing read over the phone Fri­day, the vic­tim said she want­ed John­son to “receive men­tal help,” while also seek­ing a pro­tec­tive order to keep him away from her and her fam­i­ly, wher­ev­er they went. John­son was ordered to avoid all con­tact with her.”

So it’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that the guy at becom­ing emo­tion­al­ly unhinged in recent years and may have had a per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der, although it’s not obvi­ous if he was ful­ly delu­sion­al, like hear­ing voic­es. Giv­en all that, the inves­ti­ga­tion into pos­si­ble con­tact with Black extrem­ist groups, and specif­i­cal­ly oth­er extrem­ist, is going to be crit­i­cal in terms of under­stand­ing both the intent (e.g. was this per­son­al vengeance or intend­ed as part of a broad­er “divide and conquer”/stoking the fires domes­tic ter­ror attack) and whether or not he tru­ly act­ed alone. Whether or not it does turn out he had out­side help or guid­ance, the fact that he was immers­ing him­self in Black extrem­ist pol­i­tics is a reminder that the orga­nized white suprema­cy that helped shape and inspire some­one like Dylann Roof does­n’t have a monop­oly on dement­ed dehu­man­iz­ing racial­ist world­views.

It’s also a reminder that one of the biggest chal­lenges fac­ing any reform move­ment like Black Lives Mat­ter is remain­ing open to all while pre­vent­ing extrem­ists from glom­ming on and trash­ing its rep­u­ta­tion. As is typ­i­cal of an attack of this nature, it looks like it’s doing the oppo­site of what the shoot­er want­ed and actu­al­ly help­ing to bridge the divide between police depart­ments and activists. Let’s hope that remains the case.

And if you think about, some­one like Mic­ah John­son can poten­tial­ly facil­i­tate the con­ver­sa­tion that needs to take place between law enforce­ment and African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties sim­ply by being some­one that every­one can agree is the kind of dan­ger­ous nut that make becom­ing a police offi­cer kind of a ter­ri­fy­ing pro­fes­sion. As his back­ground indi­cates, Mic­ah John­son was going off the rails with or with­out police vio­lence becom­ing a nation­al issue. And while the men­tal­ly ill are less like­ly to com­mit vio­lent crimes than the gen­er­al pub­lic, the abun­dance of heavy weapon­ry and advanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy means that, even if we addressed all the sys­temic issues that’s plagued Amer­i­can soci­ety from its begin­ning, there’s always going to be heav­i­ly armed nuts and it’s the police get the job of deal­ing with it. And since the use of lethal force, and whether or not its being fair­ly applied to black com­mu­ni­ties or part of a nation­al lega­cy of white suprema­cy, is cen­tral to so much of what the BLM move­ment is all about, hav­ing a pos­si­ble black sep­a­ratist with men­tal health issues, mil­i­tary train­ing, and a per­son­al weapons arse­nal make a racist attack on white police offi­cers who were there to pro­tect BLM pro­tes­tors is one of those events that has the pos­si­bil­i­ty of refram­ing that debate in a use­ful man­ner sim­ply by high­light­ing the fact that BLM and gen­uine police real­ly are on the same side in the greater scheme of things. It’s just not always obvi­ous in the heat of the debate. Racist or incom­pe­tent police who abuse their pow­er is obvi­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to tack­le and fig­ur­ing out how to facil­i­tate their removal with­out demo­niz­ing and demor­al­iz­ing depart­ments remains a major chal­lenge. But at the end of the day, gen­uine BLM activists and legit­i­mate cops real­ly do want the same thing: a soci­ety and jus­tice sys­tem that works for every­one, regard­less of race. And cre­at­ing a soci­ety that works for every­one real­ly is going to require a police force that has the job of doing things like fac­ing armed mad­men with grow­ing access to increas­ing­ly heavy weapon­ry. Espe­cial­ly the kind of mad­men like Mic­ah X. John­son and Dylann Roof who explic­it­ly do not want a soci­ety that works for every­one. And while John­son and Roof may have both cho­sen some of the worst ways pos­si­ble to remind us all that the phrase “unit­ed we stand, divid­ed we fall” is a basic prin­ci­ple of any func­tion­ing soci­ety and a con­stant strug­gle to main­tain, they did remind us of that. It’s some­thing we should­n’t for­get while calls for police reforms con­tin­ue because it’s going to be a lot eas­i­er to deal with bad apples or sys­temic issues and get the polic­ing reforms com­mu­ni­ties need when we’re simul­ta­ne­ous­ly rec­og­niz­ing what a pre­cious resource high qual­i­ty polic­ing real­ly is for keep­ing a soci­ety unit­ed.

In oth­er words, we don’t just have to make polic­ing work for every­one, the police and com­mu­ni­ties, because it’s the right thing to do. It’s also absolute­ly vital. We just got anoth­er hor­ri­ble reminder of that.

One more thing to note about how the sequence of events and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mul­ti­ple shoot­ers: There’s a local KREM2 News report that con­tains a num­ber of eye­wit­ness inter­views. Check out the video titled “Woman describes see­ing sniper atop down­town build­ing”, where she says she saw a man on top of a build­ing and he fired 50 rounds. The reporter asks her if she was sure he was on top of the build­ing and she says she’s pos­i­tive.

So if that account is accu­rate, it sounds like John­son or some­one else was def­i­nite­ly on top of a build­ing at one point shoot­ing into the crowd.

@Pterrafractyl–

“Open-car­ry” cer­tain­ly opens up numer­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties for hav­ing peo­ple “car­ry­ing open­ly” who could then take part in an attack.

I lis­tened to a cou­ple of hours of the news feed the evening of the inci­dent on the local CBS Radio all-news affil­i­ate, and all the accounts were con­sis­tent with what is in the “Tele­graph” arti­cle.

Tri­an­gu­lat­ed fire, mul­ti­ple shoot­ers, mul­ti­ple “per­sons of inter­est” in cus­tody.

I awoke the fol­low­ing morn­ing to news of a “lone nut.”

John­son mov­ing up and down stairs might have per­mit­ted him to be on the roof. One won­ders how famil­iar he was with the floor plan of the build­ing in ques­tion and what sort of access he had to that build­ing?

Try get­ting into a down­town high-rise build­ing in a city–commercial or res­i­den­tial. It isn’t all that easy to get in and get up to the roof.

Not impos­si­ble, but not all that easy, par­tic­u­lar­ly with a rifle.

Mov­ing up and down stairs, as John­son appar­ent­ly did, would not have account­ed for tri­an­gu­lat­ed fire, how­ev­er.

Again, police offi­cers under­stand gun­fire and echoes.

The fact that John­son very con­ve­nient­ly wrote down a doc­u­ment that would fin­ger him as the lone perp is worth con­tem­plat­ing.

I also won­der where his weapons that “were stolen” wound up?

All in all, this does not pass the sniffs test.

Yet again, I have more ques­tions than answers, but the reportage does NOT answer those ques­tions.

When Black Lives Mat­ter got going, I men­tioned to friends that I thought it would ulti­mate­ly esca­late into some­thing vio­lent and racial­ly polar­iz­ing, JUST in time for the elec­tion.

And this with the nation’s first African-Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent.

And here we go.

With “spe­cial­ized knowl­edge and abil­i­ties” being acquired by Nazis and white suprema­cists (see the post and links in the arti­cle), net­work­ing between Nazis and white suprema­cists and black fas­cists such as Far­rakhan et al, an explo­sive brew is at hand.

Best,

Dave

http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/mark-hughes-right-bear-arms/
“Yes, he had a rifle, but it is legal to open­ly car­ry rifles in Texas. And Hugh­es wasn’t the only per­son exer­cis­ing that right. Accord­ing to Dal­las Police Chief David Brown, there were about 20 or 30 peo­ple at the protest with rifles, and all of them fled with the rest of the pro­test­ers when the shoot­ing began. None of peo­ple tot­ing rifles act­ed as vig­i­lantes, but they still com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters for the police depart­ment, which then had to track them down as peo­ple of inter­est. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how only Hughes’s pic­tures was shared on social media as a sus­pect.”

As the arti­cle points out, why was Hugh­es the only per­son tar­get­ed as a sus­pect if there were oth­er peo­ple car­ry­ing rifles? Why aren’t there pic­tures of these “20–30” peo­ple car­ry­ing guns? Where are the wit­ness­es to cor­rob­o­rate police chief Brown’s asser­tion that there were “20–30” in the crowd car­ry­ing rifles? If there were oth­er peo­ple car­ry­ing rifles, why weren’t they march­ing togeth­er with Hugh­es?

Mark Hugh­es is the broth­er of Cory Hugh­es, one of the orga­niz­ers of the march and was the first to be inter­viewed by TV news after the shoot­ing.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-cleared-dallas-police-attack-hides-death-threats-article‑1.2706608
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Rally-Organizer-Cory-Hughes-Talks-About-Scene_Dallas-Fort-Worth-385954661.html

The Dal­las Cop Killer and pos­si­ble accom­plices were affil­i­at­ed with Nation of Islam.

http://www.smobserved.com/story/2016/07/08/news/islamic-connection-some-suspects-in-dallas-shooting-attended-south-dallas-mosque/1587.html

Islam­ic Con­nec­tion: Some Sus­pects in Dal­las Shoot­ing Sym­pa­thized with the Nation of Islam

On July 7, 2016, five police offi­cers were killed by sniper fire in Dal­las, Texas. Six oth­er offi­cers and two civil­ians were wound­ed. A shoot­er fired at a protest against police killings in the after­math of the shoot­ing deaths of Alton Ster­ling and Phi­lan­do Castile. This is all gen­er­al­ly known.

It seems improb­a­ble that Black Lives Mat­ter mem­bers would fire on a Black Lives Mat­ter demon­stra­tion. And that is in fact, not what hap­pened.

Among the five sus­pects now in Dal­las Police cus­tody are self described “Islam­ic Amer­i­cans” who attend­ed a Nation of Islam mosque in the South Dal­las area. It should be not­ed that the Nation of Islam itself is splin­tered into sev­er­al groups. Louis Far­rakhan, who took over the orga­ni­za­tion in 1981, sub­scribes to Dia­net­ics and appears to have left Islam alto­geth­er. It’s ide­ol­o­gy is bare­ly rec­og­niz­able as Islam­ic.

Dal­las May­or Mike Rawl­ings iden­ti­fied the shoot­er as Mic­ah X. John­son. “Mic­ah X.” appears to have been named after Black Nation­al­ist leader Mal­colm X. a mem­ber of the Nation of Islam. “While in prison, Mal­colm X became a mem­ber of the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952, quick­ly rose to become one of the orga­ni­za­tion’s most influ­en­tial lead­ers.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

John­son liked the Nation of Islam, African Amer­i­can Defense League, Black Rid­ers Lib­er­a­tion Par­ty, the New Black Pan­ther Par­ty, and oth­er black nation­al­ist groups on Face­book, and iden­ti­fied him­self as a “Black Nation­al­ist.” He wears a dashi­ki in his pro­file pic­ture, and holds his fist in the air like a Black Pan­ther. “Don’t let this white man tell you that vio­lence is wrong,” tweet­ed Far­rakhan about an hour before the Dal­las shoot­ing. John­son was one of his thou­sands of Twit­ter fol­low­ers.

The night he died, John­son told Police he was upset about recent police shoot­ings and ‘want­ed to kill white peo­ple, espe­cial­ly white offi­cers.’ He is the only sus­pect Dal­las police have pub­licly iden­ti­fied so far, and also the only dead sus­pect. He is also now iden­ti­fied as the only shoot­er (but not the only sus­pect).

“We cor­nered one sus­pect and we tried to nego­ti­ate for sev­er­al hours — nego­ti­a­tions broke down, we had an exchange of gun­fire with the sus­pect,” Dal­las Police Chief David Brown said. “We saw no oth­er option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its exten­sion for it to det­o­nate where the sus­pect was,” he said.

Using a robot to kill a sniper is a pro­ce­dure nev­er per­formed before by Amer­i­can police, but com­mon in fight­ing Islam­ic insur­gen­cies. In a tweet, defense expert Peter Singer not­ed that the MAR­Cbot machine, which is designed to tack­le bombs such as IEDs, has been used as a weapon in Iraq.

At his Mesquite home, police found guns, bomb mak­ing mate­ri­als, and a per­son­al jour­nal of com­bat tac­tics. He is described as a lon­er who spent six years in the Army Reserve, includ­ing a deploy­ment to Afghanistan. John­son had no pri­or crim­i­nal his­to­ry. But he had clear­ly been plan­ning a mass shoot­ing for a long time.

No rec­og­nized Amer­i­can Islam­ic leader pub­licly pro­motes vio­lence, though some claim the Nation of Islam is an excep­tion to that rule. How­ev­er, mem­bers of this par­tic­u­lar Mosque might rea­son­ably have believed that they them­selves were under attack.

A tense, armed protest in front of a South Dal­las mosque required Dal­las police inter­ven­tion one Sat­ur­day after­noon in April. It hap­pened in front of the Nation of Islam mosque on April 3, 2016, accord­ing to CBS Dal­las.

Anti-Moslem demon­stra­tors, dressed in fatigues and masks and most of them armed, were eas­i­ly out­num­bered approx­i­mate­ly 10 to 1 by the mosque sup­port­ers, some of whom were also armed, report­ed CBS Dal­las. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-muslim-protest-in-dallas-features-fatigues-masks-lots-of-guns/

Dozens of police offi­cers stood in between the two groups and also on rooftops to ensure noth­ing more than words were exchanged.

In a state­ment released before the April protest, the Dal­las Police Depart­ment said, “The depart­ment is com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of all cit­i­zens and will make every effort to keep this protest peace­ful.”

The was no vio­lence and no arrests. But the seeds of anger and dis­sent were sown.

Mil­i­tant Islam Reach­es Amer­i­ca is a book writ­ten by his­to­ri­an Daniel Pipes, pub­lished in 2002. It focus­es on Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism and Islamism, reflect­ing Pipes’ view that, as he said in 1995, “Unno­ticed by most West­ern­ers, war has been uni­lat­er­al­ly declared on Europe and the Unit­ed States.” The lat­est shoot­ing in Dal­las appears to have been a part of that war.

Anti moslem protest in front of the Mosque on April 3.

The protest was orga­nized by the Next Gen­er­a­tion Action Net­work after the killings of two black men, Alton Ster­ling and Phi­lan­do Castile, by police in Louisiana and Min­neso­ta, respec­tive­ly. It was one of sev­er­al protests held across the U.S. on the night of July 7. Sev­er­al hun­dred pro­test­ers were involved in the Dal­las protest, and before the shoot­ing occurred, no oth­er inci­dents were report­ed and the event was peace­ful.

Belo Gar­den Park, the loca­tion where the protest began and near where the shoot­ing occurred, was a pop­u­lar gath­er­ing place for Black Lives Mat­ter demon­stra­tions, such as one held after the death of San­dra Bland at a Waller Coun­ty, Texas, jail in 2015.

The peo­ple fir­ing on the Dal­las police used anoth­er group’s protest event, to set­tle what they saw as an offense against their race and their reli­gion.

This is a good arti­cle regard­ing the Nation of Islam from the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter. Also notice the sim­i­lar­i­ty of the rela­tion­ship between White Suprema­cists and Black Suprema­cists in the Nation of Islam an in the Nazi Nov­el “Ser­pents Walk,” in which the Nazis who take over the U.S. align with a black nationalist/separatist called the Khal­i­fa.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/nation-islam

Some of the high­lights in the arti­cle include:

“[T]he Jews don’t like Far­rakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He was­n’t a great man for me as a black per­son, but he was a great Ger­man. Now, I’m not proud of Hitler’s evils against Jew­ish peo­ple, but that’s a mat­ter of record. He raised Ger­many up from noth­ing. Well, in a sense you could say there’s a sim­i­lar­i­ty in that we are rais­ing our peo­ple up from noth­ing.”
— Louis Far­rakhan, radio inter­view, March 11, 1984

Found­ed by a mys­te­ri­ous cloth­ing sales­man in the ghet­toes of Detroit in 1930, NOI was con­sid­ered an insignif­i­cant, if high­ly media-wor­thy, “‘voodoo sect” through­out much of the 1930s and 1940s.

From the start, NOI was tight­ly orga­nized, a fact most clear­ly seen in its cre­ation of the elite “Fruit of Islam,” a group envi­sioned by Fard as a para­mil­i­tary wing to defend NOI against police attacks. In the 1940s, “mes­sen­ger” Eli­jah Muham­mad also began con­struct­ing what would lat­er be con­sid­ered the Nation’s “empire,” pur­chas­ing the group’s first bit of Michi­gan farm­land in 1945 and found­ing busi­ness­es and edu­ca­tion­al ven­tures in sev­er­al states that a decade lat­er were val­ued in the mil­lions.

By 1959, Mar­tin Luther King was warn­ing of “a hate group aris­ing in our midst that would preach the doc­trine of black suprema­cy.”

Mal­colm X had a com­plete change of heart, denounc­ing the “sick­ness and mad­ness” of the NOI’s racism and turn­ing to Sun­ni Islam.)

When Eli­jah Muham­mad died in 1975, Far­rakhan ini­tial­ly remained faith­ful to his son, Wal­lace Deen Muham­mad (lat­er Imam Warithud­din Muham­mad) who suc­ceed­ed him. But the younger Muham­mad’s dis­man­tling of the Nation’s mate­r­i­al empire and his attempts to bring NOI into the fold of main­stream Islam ulti­mate­ly alien­at­ed Far­rakhan. In 1977, a rebel­lious Far­rakhan, backed by a pow­er­ful enough base to pull it off, reject­ed the younger Muham­mad and declared the cre­ation of a “res­ur­rect­ed” NOI based on the orig­i­nal ide­ol­o­gy of Eli­jah Muham­mad.
At the head of the new NOI, Far­rakhan suc­cess­ful­ly rebuilt an empire. Aside from con­tin­u­ing NOI’s ear­li­er edu­ca­tion­al and train­ing pro­grams, the recon­sti­tut­ed Nation embarked on eco­nom­ic self-suf­fi­cien­cy pro­grams, cre­at­ing bak­eries, restau­rants, fish mar­kets and even a line of hair and skin care prod­ucts. NOI also took on a series of ini­tia­tives includ­ing pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty for hous­ing projects, reach­ing out to prison inmates, and cre­at­ing pro­grams for those suf­fer­ing from HIV and AIDS. Most recent­ly, it has worked to reach out to the world of hip-hop, engag­ing var­i­ous artists in an attempt to entice to a younger gen­er­a­tion of poten­tial NOI mem­bers.

Far­rakhan’s racist ven­om con­tin­ued, to the point that he was banned in 1986 from enter­ing the Unit­ed King­dom, where offi­cials cit­ed con­cerns for racial har­mo­ny. He fre­quent­ly reit­er­at­ed the “dirty reli­gion” theme along with ref­er­ences to the “so-called Jew” (argu­ing that the “true” Jews were black North Africans) and con­stant accu­sa­tions of secret Jew­ish con­trol of finan­cial and polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions. One of the most base­less attacks came in the form of a 1991 “study” ordered up by Far­rakhan and writ­ten by NOI’s “His­tor­i­cal Research Depart­ment.” Enti­tled The Secret Rela­tion­ship Between Blacks and Jews, the book uses iso­lat­ed exam­ples of Jew­ish mer­chants’ involve­ment in the pur­chase and own­er­ship of slaves to place the onus of the slav­ery indus­try square­ly on Jew­ish shoul­ders — a his­tor­i­cal false­hood,

While Jews remain the pri­ma­ry tar­get of Far­rakhan’s vit­ri­ol, he is also well known for bash­ing gay men and les­bians, Catholics and, of course, the white dev­ils, whom he calls “poten­tial humans ... [who] haven’t evolved yet.” All of this has helped make him attrac­tive to cer­tain white suprema­cist groups who agree that the races must be sep­a­rat­ed. In its turn, NOI has come to view white suprema­cists as peo­ple who at least under­stand NOI’s pro­gram and could there­fore become allies. {LIKE IN SERPENTS WALK}

In one ear­ly instance, Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty boss George Lin­coln Rock­well appeared at NOI’s 1962 Sav­iour’s Day Con­ven­tion, chris­ten­ing Eli­jah Muham­mad the Hitler of blacks. In anoth­er, Mal­colm X, on depart­ing from NOI in 1964, spoke of an Atlanta meet­ing (lat­er cor­rob­o­rat­ed by FBI records) between NOI and the Klan in an attempt to estab­lish mutu­al work­ing con­di­tions. In more recent years, a yearn­ing for racial sep­a­ra­tion has brought NOI oth­er strange bed­fel­lows. Dur­ing the Jesse Jack­son cam­paign, NOI was dis­cov­ered by white “Third Posi­tion­ists” (who espouse, among oth­er things, rad­i­cal racial sep­a­ratism) in the extreme-right British Nation­al Front, some of whom devel­oped friend­ly rela­tion­ships with NOI offi­cials in the late 1980s before suf­fer­ing a back­lash from the rank and file who could not under­stand their lead­er­ship’s cozy ties to Amer­i­can “nig­gers.” Sim­i­lar­ly, Amer­i­can neo-Nazi and White Aryan Resis­tance founder Tom Met­zger has praised NOI’s anti-Semit­ic rhetoric and has even donat­ed a sym­bol­ic amount of mon­ey to the Nation.

Just as dis­turb­ing has been Far­rakhan’s will­ing­ness to tie him­self to author­i­tar­i­an and, in many cas­es, vio­lent­ly repres­sive for­eign lead­ers for the sake of fur­ther­ing black and Islam­ic admin­is­tra­tions world­wide. These include Libyan dic­ta­tor Muam­mar Ghadaf­fi, Zim­bab­wean leader Robert Mugabe, and the now deceased Gen­er­al Muham­mad Zia-ul-Haq of Pak­istan and Ugan­dan despot Idi Amin.

More recent­ly, Far­rakhan has estab­lished a close rela­tion­ship with the New Black Pan­ther Par­ty, which was led by for­mer deputy Khalid Muham­mad (who left NOI after his more volatile remarks were wide­ly pub­li­cized) until Muham­mad’s death in 2001. Open­ly racist and vio­lent­ly anti-Semit­ic, the New Pan­thers have been denounced by lead­ing mem­bers of the orig­i­nal Black Pan­ther Par­ty — men like Bob­by Seale — as “a racist hate group.” But that did­n’t stop Far­rakhan from invit­ing cur­rent New Pan­ther boss Malik Zulu Shabazz to co-con­vene NOI’s 2005 Mil­lions More March, mark­ing the 10th anniver­sary of the Mil­lion Man March.

Asha­hed Muham­mad, a promi­nent NOI mem­ber and author of Syn­a­gogue of Satan, a book adver­tised on NOI’s web­site that alleges, once again, a Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy to con­trol the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Muham­mad runs the Truth Estab­lish­ment Insti­tute web­site, which, along­side Syn­a­gogue of Satan and The Secret Rela­tion­ship Between Blacks and Jews, offers works by the likes of Mark Weber, a for­mer mem­ber of the neo-Nazi Nation­al Alliance and the long-time leader of the Holo­caust-deny­ing Insti­tute for His­tor­i­cal Review.

This arti­cle men­tions that Eugene Gavin Long who mur­dered three Police Offi­cers in Baton Rouge. He was a for­mer mem­ber of Nation of Islam and he also was a Sov­er­eign cit­i­zen. He also dressed in black out­fit dur­ing his day­time assault. The arti­cle does not spec­u­late if the black­shirt and cloth­ing is the col­or of ISIS. He was in Dal­las short­ly after the shoot­ing. There were ear­ly reports of peo­ple seen chang­ing out of black cloth­ing short­ly after the shoot­ing. Were there accom­plices?

He shared pic­ture of a black man shoot­ing a police offi­cer in his squad car on Twit­ter on July 7 — the same day Army vet­er­an Mic­ah John­son killed five police offi­cers amid a Black Lives Mat­ter protest.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3694441/Masked-gunman-shoots-multiple-cops-Baton-Rouge-two-weeks-video-officers-killing-Alton-Sterling-dead-provoked-outrage.html

Some of the key quotes from the arti­cle include:

Ex-Marine sergeant turned lifestyle guru called for black peo­ple to ‘fight back, through blood­shed’ just days before ambush­ing and mur­der­ing three Baton Rouge cops on his 29th birth­day

The gun­man who shot dead three police offi­cers and wound­ed anoth­er three in Baton Rouge has been revealed as an ego­tis­ti­cal for­mer Marine who lat­er became a lifestyle guru and used the Inter­net to urge black peo­ple to ‘fight back through blood­shed.’

Gavin Eugene Long, 29, of Kansas City, Mis­souri, to Louisiana, opened fire on offi­cers after police were called to a gas sta­tion on Air­line High­way at around 8.30am on Sun­day — his 29th birth­day.

Long did not lure the offi­cers to their deaths, as pre­vi­ous reports stat­ed, but ambushed them after a mem­ber of the pub­lic called 911, Louisiana State Police’s Col. Mike Edmon­son said.

How­ev­er, author­i­ties believe Long had been in Baton Rouge for six days and knew that cops fre­quent­ed the gas sta­tion where the shoot­ing occurred, police sources told Fox News.

Offi­cers had respond­ed to the scene to reports of a masked man, dressed all in black and wield­ing an AR-15 type assault rifle.

After shoot­ing dead Mon­trell Jack­son, 32, Matthew Ger­ald, 41, and Brad Garafo­la, 45; and wound­ing Nicholas Tul­li­er, 41, Bruce Sim­mons, 51, and a third uniden­ti­fied offi­cer, 41, Long was pur­sued to the near­by B‑Quik con­ve­nience store, where he was shot dead.

Long’s body was found next door, out­side of a fit­ness cen­ter, author­i­ties said.

Since then, it has emerged that the shoot­er was a for­mer Marine, who was hon­or­ably dis­charged in 2010 after achiev­ing the rank of sergeant.

Long, who claimed to have once been a mem­ber of the Nation of Islam, also declared him­self a ‘sov­er­eign cit­i­zen’ — part of a move­ment that believes the gov­ern­ment and police hold no author­i­ty over them.

In a 2011 bul­letin, the FBI said it ‘con­sid­ers sov­er­eign-cit­i­zen extrem­ists as com­pris­ing a domes­tic ter­ror­ist move­ment’ and called the group a ‘grow­ing domes­tic threat to law enforce­ment.’

After leav­ing the Marines, Long became a life coach and self-styled ‘Alpha-pre­neur’ with a mas­sive online pres­ence. On his web­site, he described him­self as a ‘free­dom strate­gist, men­tal game coach, nutri­tion­ist, author and spir­i­tu­al advi­sor.’

Using the pseu­do­nym ‘Cos­mo Sete­pen­ra,’ a delu­sion­al Long used YouTube, Insta­gram and pod­casts to share his warped man­i­festo with the world.

He was angered by the shoot­ing of black men by police offi­cers and shared a grue­some pic­ture of a black man shoot­ing a police offi­cer in his squad car on Twit­ter on July 7 — the same day Army vet­er­an Mic­ah John­son killed five police offi­cers amid a Black Lives Mat­ter protest.

In recent YouTube videos, he rant­ed about ‘crack­ers’ — a deroga­to­ry term for white peo­ple — and spoke about Alton Ster­ling’s death. ‘If I would have been there with Alton — clap,’ Long said in a video post­ed last Thurs­day, the Dai­ly Caller reports.

Long also appears to have been in Dal­las a short time after the shoot­ings there and appears to have uploaded a video from the Texas city advo­cat­ing vio­lent protests by African Amer­i­cans.

Scroll down for video

Eugene Gavin Long, who turned 29 today, has been iden­ti­fied as the man who shot three police offi­cers dead and wound­ed three more, one of whom is in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, in Baton Rouge

Long is a for­mer Marine sergeant turned lifestyle guru who went under the pseu­do­nym of Cos­mo Sete­pen­ra and uploaded pod­casts advis­ing fol­low­ers on ‘how to be an Alpha male’ and the impor­tance of ‘check­ing your woman’

Long was shot dead in Baton Rouge on Sun­day morn­ing after ambush­ing police while wear­ing a mask and open­ing fire, killing three cops and wound­ing anoth­er three

In the footage, shot before he trav­eled to Baton Rouge, Long said: ‘One hun­dred per cent of rev­o­lu­tions, vic­tims fight­ing their oppres­sors, vic­tims fight­ing their bul­lies, 100 per cent have been suc­cess­ful through fight­ing back, through blood­shed.

‘Zero have been suc­cess­ful by sim­ply protest­ing. It has nev­er worked and it nev­er will. You’ve got­ta fight back, that’s the only way a bul­ly knows to quit. He does­n’t under­stand words.

‘If y’all wan­na keep protest­ing but for the real ones, the seri­ous ones, the alpha ones — we know what it’s going to take. It’s only fight­ing back or mon­ey. That’s all they care about. Rev­enue and blood. Noth­ing else.

‘Don’t even think about it. That’s why I don’t go to protests, because I know I speak well, I’m artic­u­late, I can moti­vate, I can inspire, and those are the ones they arrest. So I know they’d try to arrest me and I know I would die right there because you’re not going to kid­nap me.

‘That’s what (rebel slave) Nat Turn­er did. That’s what Mal­colm (X) did. You’ve got to stand, you’ve got to stand on your rights.

‘Men, this is all for you. I don’t wan­na see women at ral­lies and all that. I feel embar­rassed by see­ing that. Let me know what one of the elders were telling me in Africa.

‘When men would go out to fight the ene­my, the one that would tell her man, if you come back here defeat­ed, I’m killing you. You get what I’m say­ing. The man knew he could­n’t go home.

‘Either he killed his ene­my or he die. Because the kid sees that — damn my dad­dy came home, he got his ass whooped. He just a b****. I’d rather have this m*********** die, at least this kid knows he stands for some­thing’.

On Twit­ter, Long shared his twist­ed views. His last tweet — post­ed hours before he ambushed police offi­cers in Baton Rouge — said: ‘Just [because] you wake up every morn­ing does­n’t mean that you’re liv­ing. And just [because] you shed your phys­i­cal body does­n’t mean that you’re dead.’

In a tweet post­ed a few days ago, Long wrote that ‘more white peo­ple believe in ghost [sic] than believe in racism.’

And in anoth­er bizarre recent post, Long claimed Native Amer­i­cans were extinct. He wrote: ‘Vio­lence is not THE answer (its a answer), but at what point do you stand up so that your peo­ple don’t become the Native Americans...EXTINCT?’

Long appears to have also reg­u­lar­ly used Twit­ter to inter­act with black women and often sent them com­pli­men­ta­ry messages.But to one woman in June, he insist­ed he was­n’t ‘thirsty’ — a slang term for too eager or des­per­ate — and told her he had been celi­bate for two years.

On his web­site, Long claims to have lost 80lbs at the age of 16 after ‘self-edu­cat­ing’ about fit­ness, before spend­ing five years in the Marines ‘as one of the Corps most phys­i­cal­ly fit recruits’, com­plet­ing one tour of Iraq.

Sus­pect­ed cop shoot­er: ‘Don’t affil­i­ate me with noth­ing’

Long pub­lished pod­casts detail­ing his views online, includ­ing one uploaded from Dal­las which he vis­it­ed at the time of the cop shoot­ings, in which he says: ‘100 per cent of rev­o­lu­tions have been suc­cess­ful through blood­shed’

Just hours before launch­ing his attack on police in Baton Rouge, Long uploaded this prophet­ic mes­sage to his Twit­ter account

Long shared a grue­some pic­ture of a black man shoot­ing a police offi­cer in his squad car on Twit­ter on July 7 — the same day Army vet­er­an Mic­ah John­son killed five police offi­cers amid a Black Lives Mat­ter protest

Accord­ing to mil­i­tary records, Long was a Marine from 2005 to 2010 and rose to the rank of sergeant. He served in Iraq from June 2008 to Jan­u­ary 2009, and records show he received sev­er­al medals dur­ing his mil­i­tary career, includ­ing one for good con­duct.

Long, who received an hon­or­able dis­charge, was list­ed as a ‘data net­work spe­cial­ist’ in the Marines.

TIMELINE OF BATON ROUGE ATTACK

Col. Mike Edmon­son, of the Louisiana State Police, gave a time­line of the events relat­ed to the shoot­ing death of three Baton Rouge law enforce­ment offi­cials on Sun­day:

- 8:40 a.m. Baton Rouge police depart­ment offi­cers at a con­ve­nience store observed the indi­vid­ual. He was wear­ing all black stand­ing behind a beau­ty sup­ply store hold­ing a rifle.

- 8:42 a.m. reports received of shots fired.

- 8:44 a.m. reports received of offi­cers down on the scene.

- 8:45 a.m. reports received of more shots being fired.

- 8:46 a.m. reports received of the sus­pect, again wear­ing all black and stand­ing near a car wash locat­ed right next to the con­ve­nience store.

- 8:48 a.m. emer­gency EMS units start­ing arriv­ing at the scene.

While sta­tioned in Cal­i­for­nia, he said he became ‘a high­ly esteemed and sought after nutri­tion­ist and per­son­al train­er’ then attend­ed Cen­tral Texas Col­lege and Clark Atlanta Uni­ver­si­ty before drop­ping out, sell­ing all of his pos­ses­sions and com­plet­ing a trip around Africa, which he describes as his ‘ances­tral home­land’.

Dur­ing the trip, Long claimed to have vis­it­ed Ethiopia, Ugan­da, Kenya and Egypt, while on Twit­ter claim­ing that he has an ‘Ethiopi­an Blood­line.’

Long reg­u­lar­ly uploaded pod­casts under the name Cos­mo in which he teach­es fol­low­ers how to become ‘Alpha males’, includ­ing advice on ‘check­ing your women’ and ‘the pow­er of not giv­ing a f***’.

He also spoke with radio host Lance Scurvin, who is based in Flori­da, and had rant­ed about the death of Alton Ster­ling and police claims that the offi­cers’ body cams had fall­en off dur­ing the attack, say­ing that police should release the footage of the cam­eras falling off.

In a sep­a­rate video, Long revealed his pre­vi­ous involve­ment with a black pow­er group, say­ing: ‘I want­ed to let y’all know, because if any­thing hap­pened to me — I’m an alpha male, I stand firm and I stand for mine, till the end, till the last day in this flesh.

‘Don’t affil­i­ate me with noth­ing. Don’t affil­i­ate me with the black busi­ness school. Yeah I was also a Nation of Islam mem­ber, I’m not affil­i­at­ed with it. Don’t affil­i­ate me with The Mon­ey Team.

‘I was a Chris­t­ian, I was in Africa. Don’t try and say he was in Africa, don’t say he was this and that. They try to put you with ISIS or some­thing like that. No, I’m affil­i­at­ed with the spir­it of jus­tice, noth­ing else. Noth­ing more, noth­ing less. Make sure, there are no affil­i­a­tions.

‘I thought my own thoughts, I made my own deci­sions, I’m the one who got­ta lis­ten to the judge­ment. And my heart is pure.’

From posts on sev­er­al con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry web­sites, it also appears he believed that he was a vic­tim of ‘gang-stalk­ing’, a form of intense sur­veil­lance that involves all aspects of a per­son­’s life.

Long told peo­ple on mes­sage boards that he was a ‘TI’ — mean­ing tar­get­ed indi­vid­ual — was was fol­lowed around the clock, say­ing he had tak­en to wear­ing cam­eras in order to expose those respon­si­ble.

In 2011, short­ly after leav­ing the mil­i­tary, Long divorced his wife Airey­ona Hill, accord­ing to Mis­souri court fil­ings, which said they did not have chil­dren.

In a cou­ple of bizarre recent tweets, Long claims more white peo­ple in ghosts than in racism and that Native Amer­i­cans were extinct

Long appears to have reg­u­lar­ly used Twit­ter to inter­act with women and in one tweet in June claimed he had been celi­bate for two years

It is not known whether Long, who was mar­ried but divorced back in 2011, had any­one else liv­ing in the apart­ment with him (pic­tured, a mem­ber of the US Mar­shal ser­vice stands guard near the prop­er­ty)

Offi­cers descend­ed on an apart­ment linked with Long in Kansas City fol­low­ing the shoot­ing, though it is unclear what was found inside

The three dead police offi­cers have also been iden­ti­fied as Mon­trell Jack­son, 32, a new father and ten-year vet­er­an of the force; Matthew Ger­ald, 41, a for­mer Marine who joined the Baton Rouge police force a year ago, and Brad Garafo­la, 45, a mar­ried father-of-four who had worked for the sher­if­f’s office for 24 years.

Nicholas Tul­li­er, 41, an 18-year vet­er­an, is still in hos­pi­tal in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, while 51-year-old Bruce Sim­mons, who had been with the depart­ment for 23 years, has been treat­ed for non-life-threat­en­ing injuries. A third wound­ed offi­cer, also aged 41, has not been named. All were mar­ried with fam­i­lies.

Jack­son, 32, who wel­comed a son less than a year ago, cel­e­brat­ed his ten-year anniver­sary with the Baton Rouge Police Depart­ment just last month and was once injured help­ing to save a tod­dler from a burn­ing build­ing, The Advo­cate reports.

Mean­while, Ger­ald was a mar­ried father-of-two who was giv­en the go-ahead to go on solo patrol duty just 12 days ago, the same day Alton Ster­ling was shot dead, accord­ing to Fox News 8 New Orleans.

Ger­ald had cel­e­brat­ed his fourth wed­ding anniver­sary with wife Dechia just two weeks ago accord­ing to friends who told WWLTV that the pair had a three-year-old daugh­ter, and that Ger­ald had adopt­ed Dechi­a’s old­er daugh­ter from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage.

He served in the Marines and as a Black­hawk crew chief, friends said, and had signed up to become a Baton Rouge police offi­cer just four months ago.

The offi­cers shot and killed on Sun­day have been named as Mon­trell Jack­son, 32 (left), Matthew Ger­ald, 41 (cen­ter), and Brad Garafo­la, 45

Mon­trell Jack­son was a new father who cel­e­brat­ed his 10-year anniver­sary with the Baton Rouge Police Depart­ment last month

Kedrick Pitts, Jack­son’s half broth­er, and Octavia Lacey, his aunt, embrace in front of the offi­cer’s moth­er’s house after he was killed

Matthew Ger­ald, 41, was a Marine and mar­ried father-of-two who had been work­ing on his own for just 12 days before he died

Ger­ald had served in the Marines (left) as a Black­hawk crew mem­ber before join­ing the Baton Rouge Police Depart­ment four months ago (pic­tured right with wife Dechia, their three-year-old daugh­ter, and Dechi­a’s daugh­ter from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage)

Garo­fo­la had just fin­ished an extra shift around 8am and was head­ing to meet his wife Ton­ja before they went on hol­i­day on Mon­day when he was shot and killed. He was the father of four chil­dren, who ranged in age from sev­en to 21.

Ton­ja added: ‘He loved us so much. He was always brag­ging about his fam­i­ly .He was a great guy. Not just a great law enforce­ment, he was a great hus­band and a great father. He did­n’t deserve this. He always helped every­body.’

Short­ly before he died, Jack­son wrote a Face­book post say­ing he was ‘tired phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly.’ He said: ‘In uni­form I get nasty hate­ful looks and out of uni­form some con­sid­er me a threat.’

Brad Garafo­la, 45, was a mar­ried father-of-four who was fin­ish­ing his last shift before going on hol­i­day with his fam­i­ly when Long attacked and killed him

Ref­er­enc­ing the shoot­ing death of Alton Ster­ling, which start­ed protests in the city two weeks ago, he said: ‘I per­son­al­ly want to send out prayers to every­one direct­ly affect­ed by this tragedy. These are try­ing time. Please don’t let hate infect your heart.

‘This city must and will get bet­ter. I’m work­ing these streets so any pro­test­ers, offi­cers, friends, fam­i­ly, or who­ev­er, if you see me and need a hug or want to send a prayer, I got you.’

Jack­son’s friend Dar­nell Mur­dock said: ‘He loved his job. It moti­vat­ed him to go out and change peo­ple’s lives. He was on (the force) to help peo­ple, to make you have a bet­ter day.

‘He was hum­ble, kind and sweet. He was­n’t on there to write tick­ets. I don’t under­stand how this could hap­pen to some­one like him.’

Speak­ing after the shoot­ing, Louisiana Gov­er­nor John Bel Edwards said: ‘It’s unjus­ti­fied, it’s unjus­ti­fi­able, the vio­lence, the hatred just has to stop.

‘It’s unspeak­able that these men, risk­ing their lives to pro­tect and serve, were tak­en out in the way they were. They are every­day heroes.

‘I want to reas­sure every­one that we are doing every­thing human­ly pos­si­ble so that every­one is pro­tect­ed. Every­thing will be done to bring the shoot­er, or shoot­ers if there’s more than one, to jus­tice.

‘An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us and it has to stop,’ Gov­er­nor Edwards added.

‘The peo­ple who car­ried this out do not rep­re­sent the city of Baton Rouge, or the State of Louisiana or this coun­try.

‘There sim­ply is no place for more vio­lence, it does­n’t help any­one, it does­n’t help any injus­tice per­ceived or real, it is just anoth­er injus­tice. We are not going to tol­er­ate more hate and vio­lence tear­ing apart the lives and fam­i­lies of peo­ple in Louisiana.’

Baton Rouge Police Cpl. L’Jean McK­neely Jr said the shoot­ing took place out­side and pos­si­bly inside the B‑Quik con­ve­nience store on Air­line High­way. The sus­pec­t’s body was found next door, out­side of a fit­ness cen­ter, he said.

Accord­ing to the Advo­cate, an offi­cer made a report over a police radio at around 8.45am say­ing that a ‘lady who came up and said there was a sus­pect walk­ing with a ... and an assault rifle out here behind the store’.

Two min­utes lat­er, anoth­er offi­cer was heard shout­ing: ‘Shots fired, offi­cer down, shots fired, offi­cer down!’

Anoth­er yelled: ‘Got a city offi­cer down, shots fired! Shots fired on Air­line! I don’t know where he’s f***ing shoot­ing from.’

Police offi­cers also described the man as wear­ing a mask and ‘car­ry­ing an A‑R’ in the radio mes­sages.

An injured offi­cer is then heard shout­ing that he has been shot in the left arm, and moments lat­er cops radio in that they have seen a ‘sec­ond’ gun­man, though these reports lat­er turned out to be false.

Two oth­er ‘per­sons of inter­est’ were traced to West Baton Rouge Parish where they were ques­tioned but lat­er released with­out charge.

Gov­er­nor of Louisiana John Bel Edwards made a pas­sion­ate plea for the ‘hatred to stop’ fol­low­ing the shoot­ing in Baton Rouge

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma also con­demned the attack in Baton Rouge, describ­ing it as ‘cow­ard­ly’ and promis­ing ‘there will be jus­tice’

Offi­cer Markell Mor­ris car­ries a bou­quet of flow­ers and a Super­man action fig­ure to a makeshift memo­r­i­al for the three offi­cers shot in Baton Rouge set up out­side the hos­pi­tal where they were tak­en

Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie is locked in an emo­tion­al embrace fol­low­ing the shoot­ing of three offi­cers on Sun­day

Cops were also pic­tured embrac­ing each oth­er fol­low­ing a press con­fer­ence at which Dabadie begged for the vio­lence to stop

Mem­bers of the pub­lic were also seen hug­ging police offi­cers fol­low­ing a vig­il for the three killed in Baton Rouge on Sun­day morn­ing

Mem­bers of the pub­lic have been drop­ping off flo­ral trib­utes at the Our Lady of the Lake Hos­pi­tal for a memo­r­i­al to the offi­cers

Videos tak­en by a bystander at the scene cap­tured the pan­ic as gun­shots rang out, while anoth­er showed police offi­cers bran­dish­ing rifles as they ran towards the scene.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma sub­se­quent­ly con­demned the ‘cow­ard­ly and rep­re­hen­si­ble’ attack on the police offi­cers while vow­ing: ‘Jus­tice will be done.’

He blast­ed the assault on offi­cers ‘who put their lives on the line for ours every day’ and brand­ed the per­pe­tra­tors ‘cow­ards who speak for no one.’

In an address to the nation lat­er, he said: ‘Attacks on police are an attack on all of us and the rule of law that makes soci­ety pos­si­ble.’

Urg­ing Amer­i­cans to unite in the wake of the lat­est tragedy, he added: ‘We need to tem­per our words and open our hearts.’

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Loret­ta Lynch pledged the full sup­port of the Jus­tice Depart­ment as the inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds. She said agents from the FBI and Alco­hol, Tobac­co and Firearms were on the scene.

The Jus­tice Depart­ment will make avail­able vic­tim ser­vices and fed­er­al fund­ing sup­port, and pro­vide inves­tiga­tive assis­tance to the fullest extent pos­si­ble, she said.

Lynch added that there is no place in the Unit­ed States for such appalling vio­lence.

Air­line High­way (pic­tured top) remains closed this evening as offi­cers con­tin­ue to exam­ine the scene were Long opened fire

A Sher­if­f’s Depart­ment vehi­cle with the rear win­dow rid­dled with bul­let holes was tak­en from the scene ear­li­er today

Police patrol out­side the B‑Quik con­ve­nience store, where Long was shot dead after open­ing fire on offi­cers, killing three

Mean­while, the moth­er of Alton Ster­ling’s son Cameron, Quinyet­ta McMil­lion, released a state­ment con­demn­ing vio­lence of any kind.

She said: ‘We are dis­gust­ed by the despi­ca­ble act of vio­lence today that result­ed in the shoot­ing deaths of mem­bers of the Baton Rouge Law Enforce­ment.

‘My fam­i­ly is heart­bro­ken for the offi­cers and their fam­i­lies. We are pray­ing for them, city lead­er­ship and the Baton Rouge com­mu­ni­ty.

‘As my son Cameron and I have said from the begin­ning, all we want is peace. We reject vio­lence of any kind direct­ed at mem­bers of law enforce­ment or cit­i­zens.

‘My hope is that one day soon we can come togeth­er and find solu­tions to the very impor­tant issues fac­ing out nation rather than con­tin­u­ing to hurt one anoth­er.’

Cops have not released a motive for the killing, but Long’s online per­sona sug­gests that he har­bored vio­lent inten­tions toward police

Solemn Baton Rouge police offi­cers stand in front of the con­gre­ga­tion at Saint John the Bap­tist Church in Zachary, Louisiana, at a vig­il for the slain and wound­ed offi­cers in Baton Rouge

It has been a tense last 12 days for offi­cers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, fol­low­ing the shoot­ing death of Alton Ster­ling that has led to protests and now the shoot­ing of six offi­cers

Dozens of offi­cers and mem­bers of the pub­lic turned out to pay their respects to the six dead and wound­ed offi­cers in Louisiana overnight

Repub­li­can pre­sump­tive nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump wrote on his Face­book page: ‘We grieve for the offi­cers killed in Baton Rouge today.

‘How many law enforce­ment and peo­ple have to die because of a lack of lead­er­ship in our coun­try? We demand law and order.’

Pre­sump­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hillary Clin­ton added: ‘Today’s dev­as­tat­ing assault on police offi­cers in Baton Rouge is an assault on all of us. There is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for vio­lence, for hate, for attacks on men and women who put their lives on the line every day in ser­vice of our fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.’

‘We must not turn our backs on each oth­er. We must not be indif­fer­ent to each oth­er. We must all stand togeth­er to reject vio­lence and strength­en our com­mu­ni­ties. Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and fam­i­lies of the police offi­cers who were killed and injured today.’

Louisiana Gov­er­nor John Bel Edwards said: ‘This is an unspeak­able and unjus­ti­fied attack on all of us at a time when we need uni­ty and heal­ing.

‘Rest assured, every resource avail­able to the State of Louisiana will be used to ensure the per­pe­tra­tors are swift­ly brought to jus­tice.

‘For now, I’m ask­ing all Louisianans to join Don­na and me in pray­ing for the offi­cers who were involved and their fam­i­lies as the details con­tin­ue to unfold.’

Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on Mon­day dubbed the shoot­ings a ‘despi­ca­ble act.’

Dur­ing a speech at a Boe­ing fac­to­ry he is vis­it­ing in Aus­tralia, he said: ‘It’s a despi­ca­ble act and it’s an attack on our very way of life at home.’

‘My endur­ing thanks for every police offi­cer who gets up in the morn­ing and goes out on that night shift. And they look for one thing — they kiss their wife good-bye or their hus­band and they want to go home and tuck in their kids,’ Biden said.

‘They have a right to do that. They have a right to be able to be pro­tect­ed and we owe them big.’

‘THESE ATTACKS ARE THE WORKS OF COWARDS’: OBAMA’S STATEMENT

‘I con­demn, in the strongest sense of the word, the attack on law enforce­ment in Baton Rouge. For the sec­ond time in two weeks, police offi­cers who put their lives on the line for ours every day were doing their job when they were killed in a cow­ard­ly and rep­re­hen­si­ble assault. These are attacks on pub­lic ser­vants, on the rule of law, and on civ­i­lized soci­ety, and they have to stop.

‘I’ve offered my full sup­port, and the full sup­port of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, to Gov­er­nor Edwards, May­or Hold­en, the Sher­if­f’s Office, and the Baton Rouge Police Depart­ment. And make no mis­take – jus­tice will be done.

‘We may not yet know the motives for this attack, but I want to be clear: there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for vio­lence against law enforce­ment. None. These attacks are the work of cow­ards who speak for no one. They right no wrongs. They advance no caus­es. The offi­cers in Baton Rouge; the offi­cers in Dal­las – they were our fel­low Amer­i­cans, part of our com­mu­ni­ty, part of our coun­try, with peo­ple who loved and need­ed them, and who need us now – all of us – to be at our best.

‘Today, on the Lord’s day, all of us stand unit­ed in prayer with the peo­ple of Baton Rouge, with the police offi­cers who’ve been wound­ed, and with the griev­ing fam­i­lies of the fall­en. May God bless them all.’

Repub­li­can pre­sump­tive nom­i­nee Don­ald Trump demand­ed ‘law and order’ fol­low­ing the shoot­ing as he crit­i­cized the ‘lack of lead­er­ship’

Offi­cers were called to reports of a masked man walk­ing along the high­way in Baton Rouge with a rifle before the first shots were fired

On edge: Offi­cers ran from the hos­pi­tal where the three wound­ed cops were tak­en after some­one was arrest­ed out­side with a gun in their car, though it lat­er turned out to be a false alarm

Police received a 911 call report­ing a ‘sus­pi­cious per­son walk­ing down Air­line High­way with an assault rifle’. Pic­tured, police at the scene

The 9am shoot­ing took place less than a mile from Baton Rouge’s police head­quar­ters. Pic­tured, police on the scene this morn­ing

A police offi­cer in tac­ti­cal gear sets up in a park­ing lot while respond­ing to Sun­day morn­ing’s shoot­ing of at least six police offi­cers

Police in Baton Rouge were on high alert ear­li­er this week after a gang — includ­ing boys aged just 12 and 13 — were arrest­ed for steal­ing hand­guns as part of a ‘sub­stan­tial, cred­i­ble threat’ to harm police offi­cers in Baton Rouge.

Author­i­ties dis­cov­ered the alleged plot while respond­ing to a bur­glary at a pawn shop ear­ly on June 9. They arrest­ed one sus­pect — Anto­nio Thomas, 17 — at the scene with a hand­gun and a BB gun.

Dur­ing ques­tion­ing, Thomas said that he and three oth­er sus­pects stole the firearms and ‘were going to get bul­lets to shoot police,’ author­i­ties said.

On Tues­day, the chief also con­firmed that Thomas told police that ‘the rea­son the bur­glary was being done was to harm police offi­cers’.

Malik Bridge­wa­ter, 20, was also arrest­ed, as were two boys aged 12 and 13. The two named sus­pects are black.

The shoot­ing comes 12 days after Ster­ling was shot dead out­side a con­ve­nience store in Baton Rouge by two police offi­cers.

Ster­ling, 37, was armed but his hand­gun was in his pock­et and the footage does not appear to show him reach­ing for it.

His shoot­ing on July 5 — and that of Phi­lan­do Castile, 32, in Fal­con Heights, Min­neso­ta, the fol­low­ing day — led to nation­wide protests over the treat­ment of black peo­ple by the police.

Last week­end, thou­sands of peo­ple took to the streets in Baton Rouge to con­demn the police killings, includ­ing hun­dreds of demon­stra­tors who con­gre­gat­ed out­side the police sta­tion. Author­i­ties arrest­ed about 200 peo­ple over a three-day peri­od.

Crime scene: The busy inter­state has been com­plete­ly blocked off in both direc­tions as police con­tin­ue to inves­ti­gate the shoot­ing

While police ini­tial­ly report­ed that there may be more than one shoot­er, these reports proved false. Two ‘per­sons of inter­est’ were traced to West Baton Rouge Parish but were released with­out charge

On high alert: Two hos­pi­tals were placed on lock­down ear­li­er, with police offi­cers check­ing arrivals at all entrances

The attack in Baton Rouge comes less than two weeks after a peace­ful Black Lives Mat­ter protest on July 7 was hijacked by Mic­ah John­son, 25, who used the demon­stra­tion as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ambush police offi­cers, killing five.

John­son, 25, told author­i­ties he want­ed to kill white peo­ple — ‘espe­cial­ly white offi­cers’ — before he was killed by police using a remote-con­trolled bomb on a robot.

In the wake of the recent attack, Dal­las police chief David Brown, whose depart­ment is still in mourn­ing, led the mes­sages of sup­port to police in Baton Rouge fol­low­ing the shoot­ing. The last of the slain Dal­las offi­cers was laid to rest on Sat­ur­day.

‘Our thoughts and prayers are with Baton Rouge Police,’ Brown said.

Rev­erend Al Sharp­ton added: ‘Pray­ing for the fam­i­lies of the police offi­cers shot in Baton Rouge as we await the full details.

‘This sense­less vio­lence real­ly must stop.’

Speak­ing after Sun­day’s shoot­ing, Veda Ster­ling, Alton Ster­ling’s aunt, told local tele­vi­sion news that ‘things will now get 100 times worse’.

‘We want to offer our con­do­lences to the offi­cers’ fam­i­lies because we know first-hand what they are going through. We just went through this,’ she said.

‘We also want it to be known that this is not in retal­i­a­tion due to Alton’s death. There was no protest­ing going on there on where this took place.’

Black street sell­er Alton Ster­ling was shot by two white police offi­cers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 12 days before Sun­day’s shoot­ing